Payment and Workforce Solutions to Look for at HITEC 2025

HITEC 2025 Guest Blogger

HFTP is thrilled to have hospitality finance pro and longtime HFTP contributor Ron Strecker, CHAE+, CHTP+, reporting from HITEC 2025! With over 40 years of experience in senior finance roles—and deep expertise in back-office tech—Ron brings a sharp, practical lens to this year’s must-watch trends. He’ll be sharing a series of articles throughout HITEC 2025, drawing on his consulting work, speaking experience, and decades of financial know-how to help you spot real solutions that can make a difference in your organization.

Welcome to the pre-arrival edition of my blog for HITEC 2025. Rather than try and share the large array of topics, sessions, and demos taking place, this year’s blog will focus on two areas common to every hospitality business. 

• Modern Payment Innovations 

• Workforce and Talent Solutions 

I’ll be the first to admit that these areas may not be as provocative as the latest guest journey innovations, but the latest solutions can save money, improve operating efficiencies, and improve teamwork. 

Modern Payment Innovations 

The hospitality business, like any other business, has a goal of being profitable. Every day customers give us payments derived from revenues, while at the same time we are sending payments out to our staff and vendors to cover expenses. Money in, money out, and the rest is profit. Simple, right? 

Payment innovations have impacted both sides of this equation. When it comes to receiving payments from our guests, we strive to stay compliant with PCI/DSS regulations. Yet there are still exceptions that hotels feel can only be solved by asking the guest to fax or email a scanned credit card authorization form with a picture of the front and back of the credit card. Not smart! 

You will find vendors at HITEC offering apps that can securely share banking information from guests when a typical credit card transaction may not be possible or preferred. This type of feature has been very well received in handling payments for group and catered events. If you’re still waiting for the check to arrive in the mail, you need to look at a better solution that securely speeds up receipt and saves the client a postage stamp. 

Paying the bills has also become more efficient, cost effective, and secure. If you are making any type of payment by printing and signing checks, then you are using the most expensive and least secure method. Printing and signing takes time, and checks get lost resulting in stop-payment and reissuing. Many of these solutions are offered as part of the accounts payable module from ERP vendors while other solutions can be easily adapted to your current accounting software. 

Today, payroll can be direct deposited into bank accounts or added to a pay card, even daily. As a result, the monthly bank statement reconciliation is a breeze with no outstanding checks. This solution is not new so if you’re still doing payroll checks you’re wasting valuable time.   

Where to find Payment Solutions at HITEC 

For more information about innovative ways to handle payments check out the vendors in the HITEC Exhibitor Directory under the following categories: 

• Back Office Accounting/ERPs  

• Commission Processing  

• Credit Card & Payment Systems  

• Inventory/Purchasing  

• Procurement Systems  

Workforce & Talent Solutions 

The staff that work for us should be a priority. Unfortunately, the procedures and paperwork involved in the “hire to retire (or fire)” process, and everything in between can be crazy. How many different forms, or screens on the computer, ask you to enter the same information more than once? And how do you prepare weekly work schedules? Are they handwritten or prepared in Excel?  If so, then you are sadly behind the times. 

Amongst the vendors at HITEC you will find solutions that can streamline the application, interviewing, and onboarding process so information is only entered one time. Then any needed information is integrated and shared with payroll and downloaded to timeclocks.  

But wait, there’s more. With the data going into timeclocks, you should be able to create accurate schedules quickly, share them digitally with the staff, and even let the staff exchange schedules (with the proper supervisor authorization) or submit requests for days off. Even more importantly, what if these schedules were dynamic based on your upcoming business forecasts. 

Other features that have evolved include talent development, computer-based training, staff scheduling across hotel clusters, and staff engagement/gamification tools. The vendors offering solutions in this area can be found under the category:  

• HR, Time and Labor Management  

Drop me a line if you’re looking for similar solutions at HITEC. I’ll see everyone in June.